Blass, Rachel - The Meaning of the Dream in Psychoanalysis

The Meaning of theDream in Psychoanalysis

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SUNY series in Dream StudiesRobert L. Van de Castle, editor

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T H E M E A N I N G

O F T H E D R E A M

I N P S Y C H OA N A LY S I S

Rachel B. Blass

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

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Published byState University of New York Press, Albany

2002 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blass, Rachel B., 1961The meaning of the dream in psychoanalysis / Rachel B. Blass.

p. cm. (SUNY series in dream studies)Includes bibliographical references and indexISBN 0791453170 (alk. paper)ISBN 0791453189 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Dream interpretation. 2. Dreams. 3. Psychoanalysis. I. Title. II. Series.

BF175.5D74 B57 2002154.63dc21

200104201210 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. The Context: Conceptual Clarificationand Previous Research 9

Chapter 2. Freuds Justification of His Dream Theoryin The Interpretation of Dreams 63

Chapter 3. Can the Application of Psychoanalytic Principlesto the Dream be Justified? 117

Chapter 4. Developments Regarding the Dream Theory andIts Justification after Freuds The Interpretationof Dreams 153

Chapter 5. The Experiential Quality of Meaningfulnessand the Overcoming of the Obstacle to theHolistic Justification of the Dream Theory 167

Chapter 6. Conclusions 197

Notes 211

References 219

Index 229

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A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

T his book was made possible in part by grants from the Israel FoundationTrustees. Chapter 2 incorporates some ideas I expressed in my paperThe Limitations of Critical Studies of the Epistemology of Freuds DreamTheory and their Clinical Implications, which appears in Psychoanalysis andContemporary Thought, 24 (2001). I am thankful to International UniversitiesPress for permission to use that material.

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Introduction

Books are the entryway to dreams.Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

F rom the time of antiquity the dream has mystified humankind. The desire to know the meaning of the images that pass through ourmind in the course of sleep, the meaning of the strange events that happen to usthen, and the stories with which we wake up and have been waking up sincechildhood, have led over the generations to a range of theories regarding thedream and its meaning. Many of these theories may be read as warnings tothose who wish to penetrate the mystery: There is nothing to be sought there,the dream has no meaning. Freud (18561939), more than any other modern-day investigator, would not heed such warnings. He took it upon himself to dis-cover the meaning of the apparently meaningless; to reveal the secrets of themind that seem to elude comprehension. It was his ardent wish to know thedream, for him a last bastion of mental products that seemed to refuse to suc-cumb to human understanding.

Freud asserts that it was on July 24, 1895, that the secret of the dreamrevealed itself to Dr. Sigm. Freud (Freud, 1985, p. 417). It was approximatelyfive years later that he published his most comprehensive statement on this rev-elation, appearing in his best-known book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).There he presents in detail what were to become the foundations and the heartof the psychoanalytic theory regarding the meaning of dreams.

The present book comes to critically examine this theory. The question itdeals with is an epistemological one: What is the justification for the assertionthat we know or can come to know a meaning of a dream? To further demar-

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cate: The question is not whether the dream has this or that particular meaning,but rather whether it is possible to obtain any knowledge regarding the meaningof the dream. That is, the question is whether there is any support at all to theidea that dream analysis can lead to the discovery of meanings that actually exist inthe dream. If the dream does have meaning, can we indeed come to know of it,as Freud and all of his followers to the present day so strongly affirm?

Although I am here putting into question a major tenet of psychoanalyticthought, this is not my aim per se. This study is not another in the series ofworks aimed at uprooting or demolishing Freudian psychoanalysis piece bypiece (e.g., Eysenck, 1985; Eysenck & Wilson, 1973; Masson, 1984). On thecontrary, in the course of the study I will take as a basic premise that the psy-choanalytic theory as a whole is valid and justified. Although this premise mayseem far-reaching, it allows me to examine epistemological issues specific to thedream theory that arise from within the psychoanalytic framework. As I willshow, assuming the general validity of this framework, there emerge specialobstacles to the justification of the psychoanalytic dream theory that have beenneglected in the psychoanalytic and philosophical literature. Both the study ofthe difficulties that this specific theory faces and the way in which I believe theymay be overcome, at least in part, may be seen to have not only theoretical sig-nificance, but clinical significance as well.

This book will be composed of six chapters. In chapter 1, I will preparethe ground for various issues dealt with throughout the book. This preparationfirst entails the clarification of some basic terms, primarily the terms of justifi-cation and meaning. We must have some conception regarding what consti-tutes a justification if we are to inquire into the justification of thepsychoanalytic theory regarding the meaning of the dream. We must also havesome conception of the meaning of meaning. Both terms are complex, involv-ing matters of definition as well as views regarding epistemology and what psy-choanalysis is all about.

The emergence of a hermeneuticist approach within psychoanalysis in thepast twenty-five years has led to some confusion regarding the range of availableforms of justification as well as regarding the meaning of meaning. The psycho-analytical hermeneuticists argue that the scientific approach is not relevant topsychoanalysis, which is concerned with meaning, and that the limited empiri-cal methods of justification, which are applicable to the natural sciences have noplace when it comes to this unique theory of meaning. Most importantly, intheir view, the meanings of what we do, say, think, or express in some otherway, are not the kinds of things that can be discovered; we cannot reveal theactual or true meanings that exist in the subjects mind. Rather, we attributemeanings to our expressions either on the basis of some creative literary analysisof them or on the basis of our descriptions of our immediate experience of whatthese meanings are. But there is no inherent connection between these creative

2 The Meaning of the Dream in Psychoanalysis


and descriptive attributions of meaning and anything that really exists within usand can be discovered. Thus to adopt these views of justification and meaning isto dismiss the very framework within which there emerges our epistemologicalquestion regarding the possibility of discovering the meanings of dreams.

It is for this reason that in clarifying the terms justification and mean-ing I have found it necessary to discuss this hermeneuticist approach, as well asthe hermeneuticists view of the scientific approach that they consider them-selves to be contending with, an approach often referred to as positivistic. Byclarifying the hermeneuticist claims against positivism I will sharpen the con-ceptualizations of these terms in psychoanalysis today. This will also bring tothe fore howcontrary to the hermeneuticist positionpsychoanalysis as atheory of meaning may remain within the sphere of science and apply varioussuitable forms of justification. It is thus possible and important to inquire intothe question of whether we are discovering the true meanings of our expres-sions, including the true meanings of our dreams.

Having clarified these terms, I will turn to a brief overview of Freuds usesof the term meaning and justification as well as to the related term truth.

Finally, I will examine the works of two writers who have specificallyraised epistemological questions regarding the psychoanalytic theory of dreaminterpretation (Grnbaum, 1984, 1993; Spence, 1981). This will point to theplace and necessity of the current study.

Chapter 2 turns to Freud and the foundations that he set for the psycho-analytic theory of dream interpretation. The bulk of the chapter is a careful andcomprehensive critical analysis of Freuds argument in favor of the dream theoryas he set it forth in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). I will show how hisjustification of the theory does not stand up to the criteria that Freud himselfset. But I will also show how this failure does not necessitate the rejection of thedream theory or a hermeneutical modification of it such that it may be acceptedeven though it does not really tell us anything regarding meanings that actuallyexist in the dream. I will argue, rather, that this failure points to another possi-ble source of justification. Although Freud did not present or fully recognize itas such, the justification of the dream theory ultimately relies on its belongingto the broader network of psychoanalytic thinking. While it cannot stand on itsown right, it may derive its validity from its place in the broader network ofideas. The dream theory is in effect an application of general psychoanalyticthought and method to the dream, rather than an independent theory with itsown methods.

The fact that dream interpretation involves the application of general psy-choanalytic principles to the dream may not come as news to any practitioner.However, the recognition of the fact that the justification of the theory restssolely on this application does raise a crucial issue that has not been addressed:

Introduction 3


Is the application of general psychoanalytic principles to the dream legitimate? Thiscannot be taken for granted.

Chapter 3 sets forth the basic principles and assumptions that underliepsychoanalysis general theory of meaning. It then carefully examines whether itis legitimate to apply these principles and assumptions to the dream. Does theavailable evidence regarding the state of our psyche and its meanings during thedream warrant such an application? The conclusion is that basic phenomeno-logical and commonsense observation put this in doubt. Relying on familiar evi-dence, the dream appears to hold a special status as a potential context ofmeaning that results from the unique difficulty in determining the nature of thenetwork of meaning that is operative during the dream. If it cannot be deter-mined that the same basic networks of meaning are operative during the dreamand during the wakeful state in which the dream is being interpreted, then thegeneral psychoanalytic principles for discovery of meaning cannot be applied tothe dream.

If this conclusion is not overturned, then we will not have succeeded inputting forth a justification of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams. In theabsence of the possibility of applying to the dream the general psychoanalyticprinciples for the discovery of meaning, the epistemology of the dream theoryremains unfounded. It would then be necessary to maintain an agnostic stanceregarding dream interpretation. Namely, we would have to maintain that it maybe that the dream is meaningful, but that in applying the psychoanalyticmethod of interpretation to the dream we do not in fact know whether we arediscovering meanings or simply inventing them.

At the end of chapter 3, I will suggest that by relying on a new kind ofevidence there is a way of coming to know that the network of meaning that ispresent during the dream is, indeed, the same as that which exists in the wakefulstate. Consequently, general psychoanalytic principles can be applied to thedream and the theory can be justified. But before turning to the detailed exposi-tion of my solution to the epistemological problem that faces the psychoanalytictheory of dreams, it is necessary to address the question of whether since 1900there have been any new developments within psychoanalytic theory regardingthe dream that have made obsolete the need for a solution. Has the psychoana-lytic theory of dreams changed in a fundamental way such that the difficultiesin relation to Freuds theory are overcome or are no longer relevant? Has a newform of justification been put forth? This is the topic of chapter 4. Here I donot go in detail into the new approach to dream analysis that is put forth bypsychoanalytical hermeneuticistssince it is merely a derivative of their generalposition regarding the discovery of meaning and justification that was addressedin chapter 1but rather I focus on the other developments that have takenplace in the field.



Indeed, there have been many kinds of specific developments regardingdreams, and it is recognized that the dream no longer holds the royal place thatit did at the time of Freud. Nevertheless, in terms of the approach to meaningand justification, the developments and examinations have not been thatnumerous. The clinical and theoretical innovations that have been put forthhave not modified the basic conceptions of the nature of meaning and themethods of its discovery in such a way that the Freudian conceptions of theseare no longer relevant. And the changes that have been introduced all rely onthe assumption that the dream is a context of meaning and that its meaningsmay be discovered by the awake individual. Little, however, has been done tojustify this proposition. In fact, the only analyst to continue to pursue its justifi-cation after 1900 was Freud himself. And while he seems, at points, to havetaken some important steps toward understanding the difficulties involved inthe justification process, ultimately, Freuds later attempts do not secure a morefirm foundation for his dream theory than does his failed 1900 justification.The task of justifying the psychoanalytic dream theory still remains with us.

In the next chapter I intend to meet this task. But before doing so I turnto examine at greater length one particular development that has emergedregarding the dream theory. This is the development of what I refer to as theAffective-Experiential approach to the meaning of the dream, an approach thatplaces special emphasis on experiencing the dream, rather than on recognizingthe ideational connections that underlie it. This approach does not in any wayprovide a solution to the problem of the justification of the psychoanalyticclaim that the analysis of dreams can lead to the discovery of their meaning.Nevertheless, it is important to understand it in order to distinguish the experi-ential dimensions to which it refers from those that I will discuss in my solutionto the problem.

I set forth this solution in chapter 5. It is based on the in-depth analysis ofan experiential dimension that has never been discussed in the relevant litera-ture. I have called this dimension the experiential quality of meaningfulness.The understanding of the nature of this experience and what it tells us regardingthe state of the psyche ultimately points to the fact that this experience couldnot be felt in relation to dreams were it not for the fact that the individuals net-work of meaning when awake and during the dream are the same. Since we doat times experience meaningfulness in relation to our dreams, we must concludethat these networks are indeed basically the same (although they seem to finddifferent forms of manifest expression). This conclusion provides the basis forthe application to the dream of the general psychoanalytic principles for thedetermination of meaning. Once the application of these principles to thedream is found to be legitimate, justification of the dream theory is attained.

In this form of justification what is shown is that the epistemological basisfor the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is indeed as well founded as the psycho-

Introduction 5


analytic theory in general is. For skeptics regarding psychoanalysis this may notbe saying much, but for all those who contend that the basis of psychoanalysis isgrounded as well as for those who have a strong intuition that its basis one daywill be grounded, this should come as cheering news.

The final chapter, chapter 6, will end with a discussion of implications.They extend far beyond a simple conclusion that Freuds theory has now beenproven right. There is a range of clinical and theoretical implications as well asimplications for the inherent tie between the clinical and theoretical domains.While it is commonly recognized that theory shapes the clinical practice, it isnot as well recognized that philosophically oriented, meta-theoretical issueshave a direct effect on it. I hope to show in the course of this book not onlythat they do have this effect but also that these issues can be dealt with in a waythat lends psychoanalysis scientific respectability. We need not rely on intu-ition alone or create new nonscientific domains in order to make sense of whatpsychoanalysis does.

Before turning to the examination of the issues at hand, I would like to

add two comments on the nature of this study. The first has to do with thenature of its basic framework. My basic framework is psychoanalytical. I amassuming the general truth of psychoanalytic theory and examining whetherwithin that framework the dream theory is justified. To examine this I must ofcourse be able to stand outside the theory and observe it critically. But this doesnot require that I respond to critiques of the dream theory that are based onskepticism regarding the very foundations of psychoanalysis in general, or to cri-tiques that psychoanalysis has already addressed. In this context recent objec-tions to the psychoanalytic theory of dreams that have come from circles ofbiological research are not in the scope of the present study. Since, however,Hobsons & McCarleys (Hobson, 1988; Hobson & McCarley, 1977; McCar-ley and Hobson, 1977) work in this area has made these objections particularlypopular I will now briefly explain why their biological findings do not refute thepsychoanalytic dream theory.

In a nutshell, Hobsons and McCarley offer a physiological account ofhow the dream, with all its peculiarities, comes into being. They claim that thedream is generated without the involvement of the forebrain area and hencedoes not involve consciousness. They thus conclude, in contradiction to Freudspsychological theory of dream formation, that ideas cannot be the driving forceof dreams (Hobson & McCarley, 1977).

There have been numerous responses to this critique (Fischer, 1978;Foulkes, 1985; Grnbaum, 1984; Labruzza, 1978), but that of the sleep physi-ologist Vogel (1978) is the most comprehensive. Not only does he point toadditional evidence indicating that indeed the forebrain is involved, but he alsoaddresses the methodological problem with refuting such a psychological theoryon biological grounds. To do so, it must be shown that the activated state of the



areas of the brain that have been found to generate the dream are in no way cor-related with the psychological states that are hypothesized to be responsible forthe dream. Vogel argues that Hobson and McCarley have failed to show this.

Moreover, it should be noted that at the heart of Hobsons and McCar-leys critique of Freudian theory lies the claim that the dream instigators are notideas or wishes. This, however, does not interfere with the possibility that at alater point in the dreaming process the lower-level brain activation, whichaccording to Hobson and McCarley does instigate the dream, will be modifiedby higher level brain activity. The consequence of this would be that while thedream is not instigated by ideas, it does, nevertheless, express ideas. In fact, inone lecture, Hobson admitted that due to such later activity it is definitely pos-sible that the dream would be an expression of Freudian meanings (Hobson,1991). Since our concern is with meanings that the dream contains or expresses,the biological critique of the psychoanalytic dream theory, which centers on theissue of the original instigation of the dream, is irrelevant here. In fact, I wouldargue that it is irrelevant in general. As we will see, the essence of the psychoan-alytic theory of dreams is in the claim that the dream contains accessible mean-ings. The claim that the nature of those meanings is wishes is secondary, andthe claim that wishes are what instigated the dream is even further removed. (In1933, even Freud [1993a, p. 29] directly puts forth the view that the wishfulnature of dreams emerges from the processing of memory traces that arise in thedream simply because they are highly charged.)

I believe that the recent concern with the biological critiques of Freudiandream theory diverts attention from much more serious questions that currentlythreaten its foundations. The present study will bring these to the fore.

The second comment that I would like to make before turning to thestudy itself is about its form. In order to carefully analyze the nature of thedream theory and other related psychoanalytic formulations, such as variouspsychoanalytic formulations of meaning, truth, the process of interpretation,and so on, I have found it necessary to dissect broad psychoanalytic statementsand propositions into very small parts. The clinical reader, who is not familiarwith complex philosophical argumentation and who is acquainted with thesepsychoanalytic statements and propositions only in their broad form, may atfirst find it difficult to recognize them when viewed under the microscope. Animmediate reaction may be that this is not what we are doing in our psychoan-alytic work or this is not what we are saying through the psychoanalytic posi-tions we have adopted. For this reason that I would like to suggest to theclinical reader to bear with me through the dissections and complex argumenta-tions. Their careful scrutiny will reveal that I have indeed taken the utmost careto remain loyal to the nature of what is done and said in clinical practice. Fur-thermore, it is through the complex process that I present here that a new andstronger foundation for psychoanalytic dream theory is ultimately attained.

Introduction 7


C H A P T E R O N E

The Context: Conceptual Clarification

and Previous Research

When I use a word Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornfultone it means just what I choose it to meanneither more norless.The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words meanso many different things.The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be masterthats all.Alice was too much puzzled to say anything.

Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

A major role of any theory is to describe and/or explain a certain range ofphenomena. Although theories also have other usesfor example, clinicalapplications and other practical usagesthese logically rely on the way thetheory understands and explains the phenomena in question. The psychoana-lytic theory, for example, has been generally thought of as a theory that attemptsto understand the psychic processes in the individuals mind, their interrelation-ships, their genetic sources, how they affect and experience behavior, and so on.

Because theories attempt to describe and explain, it follows that not anytheory is just as good as any other. Although we humans may never be able toknow the ultimate truth, we can nevertheless examine different theories and see

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which one accounts better for the data, explains better, yields better practicalapplications, or, in short, which theory is acceptable from the perspective of ourcurrent knowledge; or, to use the philosophical jargon, which theory is justified.The fact that a given theory is justified does not necessarily imply that it is truein some ultimate sense, for it may turn out upon future discoveries that it is notso. It means, however, that it is the best approximation (or is one among severalequally best approximations) that is available to us at present, so that as far as wecan see now there are good reasons for maintaining the theory rather thanrejecting it or replacing it by another. In order for us to know that a giventheory is not an arbitrary invention but a serious contender, it needs to be justi-fied; it has to be shown to be acceptable on the basis of available data and con-siderations. The issue of how theories are to be justifiedthat is, how we knowwhich theory is more acceptablefalls within the domain of epistemology (thestudy of knowledge).

These remarks on theory and justification apply, Of course, to the psycho-analytic theory in general, and in particular to its dream theory, which is thesubject matter of this study. If the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is to bemore than an arbitrary invention that is just as good as any other, it has to beshown to be acceptable or, in other words, justified. The basic epistemologicalissue that underlies the psychoanalytic dream theory is, therefore: How can wejustify the theory that dreams can be analyzed for their meanings in the waydescribed by the psychoanalytic theory? And, more generally: How can we jus-tify the claim made in psychoanalytic theory that dreams have meanings at all(rather than being mere meaningless scribbles), and that these meanings may bediscovered through analysis?

These questions will be the subject matter of the present study.

PART I: CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION

To explore the epistemological foundation of the psychoanalytic theory ofdreams requires that we first clarify some concepts that are basic to this issue.Especially important for the present discussion are the concepts of justificationand that of meaning, as well as the concept of truth. In addition, various alterna-tive approaches that are based on different understandings of these conceptssuch as positivism, hermeneuticism, Foundationalism, Coherence theory, andthe likeare also pertinent to the issue. This first chapter will focus on thesetopics with a twofold aim: first, to sharpen and enrich relevant concepts andideas that are often left vague and tend to obscure important issues and distinc-tions; and, second, to form common ground with the reader who may be famil-iar with another range of concepts or with different senses of the terminology Iwill be using.



First, concerning the concept of justification, we must understand pre-cisely what constitutes an adequate form of justificationspecifically of the psy-choanalytic theoryand what forms of justification have in fact been applied inthe course of the development of psychoanalysis. These have been disputedtopics within psychoanalysis and have suffered much from conceptual confu-sion. I will not attempt to conclusively resolve these very broad issues. I willrather present my formulation of them and the definitions I will be using in thecourse of the study, and will attempt to clarify common and potential confu-sions relevant to this work.

Just like the concept of justification, the concept of meaninganotherhighly problematic concept, both within and outside of psychoanalysismustalso be demarcated. The way in which I will be using the term and my formula-tions of the ways in which it has been used in the course of the development ofpsychoanalysis must be distinguished from numerous other formulations andusages. Here too my aim will be to provide the framework necessary for the cur-rent study. We must know what we mean by meaning and what Freud meantby meaning if we are to inquire into the possibility of obtaining these in thecourse of Freudian dream analysis.

There are a variety of forms of justification and many meanings to mean-ing. Within psychoanalysis, however, in the past twenty years the range ofdiversity has been truncated by a tendency to view the alternatives in terms of aspurious debate between what are portrayed as two warring camps on the fieldof the conceptualization of psychoanalysisbetween what has been referred toas the positivists and the hermeneuticists. This false debate is the product ofmembers of the latter camp.

The psychoanalytic hermeneuticists primarily present themselves as anapproach sensitive to experience and concerned with the explanation of behav-ior, experience, thought, and so on, in terms of meanings rather than in termsof causes, the latter relegated to the positivistic approach. According to thehermeneuticists, one cannot apply methods of investigation and justificationthat are acceptable in scientific disciplines to their experience-near meaningfulexplanations of the individual. The positivistic approach with which they con-trast themselves includes all the simplistic formulations of the scientificapproach to the conceptualization of psychoanalysis and consequently to its jus-tification, and is considered to be neglectful of delicate issues of experience andmeaning. This debate is spurious because matters are far from being so simple.Science has much more to offer in terms of justification and meaning (and inother respects) than is presented (or misrepresented) by the hermeneuticists.Conversely, the foundations and implications of the hermeneuticist position areproblematic. The real dispute is between the broad range of conceptions thatscience has to offer and psychoanalytic hermeneuticism.

The Context: Conceptual Clarification and Previous Research 11


As I will argue, this spurious debate between positivism and hermeneu-ticism creates a false dilemma concerning the issue of justification. Justificationis reduced to one of two very much simplified alternatives. The so-called posi-tivists are attributed the simplistic application of natural science methods, withthese methods being limited to those of an atomistic kind of Foundationalism.In contrast, the hermeneuticists tend to maintain that what testifies to the valid-ity of the psychoanalytic endeavor are various aspects of the coherence of thepatients narrative that emerges in the clinical setting.

I will also argue that in this spurious debate the concept of meaning issimilarly reduced to a very limited branda noncausal one. Other possibleunderstandings of the concept are excluded and the choice facing the analyst issupposedly between the neglect of the issue of meaning or concern with thisspecific noncausal type.

This debate, explicitly and, more important perhaps, implicitly, pervadesthe psychoanalytic literature, loading many concepts with a variety of confusingconnotations. Thus, in order to appreciate the definitions and formulations ofjustification and meaning that I will be putting forth, it will be necessary tobegin with a clarification of some of this confusion. Once the false dilemmabetween positivism and hermeneuticism is clarified, the falseness of the dilem-mas between meaning and cause and between atomism and coherence will alsobecome apparent, and the place of the variety of forms of meaning and justifica-tion in psychoanalysis will be appreciated.

Here too my aim is not comprehensive exposition and resolution. Entirebooks have been written to this aim (e.g., Barrat, 1984; Edelson, 1988; Grn-baum, 1984, 1993; Strenger, 1991). What I hope, rather, is to create an open-ing in the conceptual field of psychoanalysis that would allow for theintroduction of various available forms of justification into the field and for adeeper understanding of the choice between them.

Positivism Versus Psychoanalytic Hermeneuticism:Clarification of Their Debate and Concepts of Meaning

Since the beginning of Freuds earliest psychoanalytic writings until the presentday, the question of the possibility and the status of psychoanalysis as a sciencehas been a controversial issue. Throughout his life, Freud fought the evaluationof his theory as a scientific fairy tale, as Krafft-Ebing already had put it wayback in 1896 (Freud, 1985, p. 184; see Blass & Simon, 1992, 1994). He main-tained until the end both that psychoanalysis adopts and should adopt no stanceother than that of science, and that despite difficulties it was indeed successfullyliving up to the standards of science. More specifically, regarding the adoptionof the scientific stance, and in some ways parallel to contemporary debates,Freud (1933c, p. 159) insisted that the objection that his scientific stance over-



looks the claims of the human intellect and the needs of the human mind . . .cannot be too energetically refuted. It is, he argued, quite without a basis,since the intellect and the mind are objects for scientific research in exactly thesame way as any non-human things.

Over the years, the adversaries of Freuds scientific stance took a varietyof forms. After Freuds early discussion of the scientific status of psychoanaly-sis, the main claim that psychoanalysis worked vigorously to refute (e.g., Hart-mann, 1959; Waelder, 1960; Wallerstein, 1964) was the claim put forth byphilosophers such as Hook (1959), Nagel, (1959) and Popper (1963) thatFreudian psychoanalysis fails to live up to the legitimate scientific standards itset itself. But in the past thirty to forty years, the very question of whetherthese standards are legitimate, whether the scientific stance should be adopted,has returned to center stagethis time from within psychoanalysis itself. Grad-ually emerging within the metapsychology versus clinical theory debate of the1960s and 1970s (Gill, 1976; Klein, 1976; Wallerstein, 1976), in the last twodecades it has evolved into the debate over psychoanalytic hermeneuticism.While in the course of its development psychoanalytic hermeneuticism has tosome degree been inspired by the discipline of philosophical hermeneutics thatcame into its own in the second half of this century, the present study is con-cerned only, and will refer only, to hermeneuticism as it has uniquely emergedwithin psychoanalysis.1

As noted earlier, the hermeneuticists focus on meaning and coherence.The way in which they focus on these issues and their stance in general hassome confusing implications. This confusion is best understood through theiropposition to what they consider the scientific approach to psychoanalysis. Thehermeneuticists contrast their stance with that of science, but the scope of sci-ence with which they are holding a debate is, as we will soon see, very con-stricted and strangely defined. It is what they often coin positivism withwhich they are arguing. Accordingly, I will maintain the distinction betweenscience on the one hand, and their term positivism on the other, the latterreferring to the specific conception of science with which the hermeneuticistsfeel they are carrying on their debate.

Among the psychoanalytic hermeneuticists one may find leading psycho-analytic writers, such as Goldberg (1984), G. Klein (1976), Renik (1993,1998), Schafer (1976, 1983), Spence (1982) in the United States, and Home(1966), Klauber (1967), Ricouer (1970, 1981), and Rycroft (1966) in Europe.2

More impressive, however, is the infiltration of these views into everyday psy-choanalytic thinking and parlance. Although I doubt that many analysts wouldespouse the hermeneuticist conception if its full implications were recognizedand made explicit, it seems that many voice major tenets of this view when theoccasion arises. It is not unusual to hear it suggested in respectable psychoana-lytically oriented case presentations or lectures, by senior practitioners and



beginners alike, that there is no fact of the matter regarding the patients motivesand meanings since we are not dealing with empirical reality, the domain of nat-ural science (e.g., Haesler, 1994) or that meanings (in a psychological sense) arenot really discovered through the psychoanalytic process but in some mysteriousway come into being within the psychoanalytic session and therefore are non-causal, unlike in science (e.g., Kulka, 1994). The bottom line is that we havenow recognized that psychoanalysis deals with interpretation, not with science.These are all basic tenets of the psychoanalytic hermeneuticism.

It should be noted that when such sentiments are expressed they do notalways seem to be part of a comprehensive and well-formulated stance on thesematters, but rather appear to be responses to local doubts and difficult ques-tions. Questions such as how it is possible to explain the fact that analysts fromdifferent schools arrive at different understandings of the patient or how we canknow for sure that the nature of the connection between certain associated ideasis indeed a causal one, may lead to a quick skepticism regarding psychoanalysisas a science and to a recourse to such hermeneuticist solutions, rather than to amore in-depth exploration of the issues. The adoption of the hermeneuticistsolution is relatively easy and most practitioners do not feel compelled to devotethemselves to the search for a comprehensive resolution of such philosophicallyoriented meta-questions. This may be because most practitioners do notencounter such questions in their ongoing clinical work. Also, it is my impres-sion that it is believed that the answers to these questions would not have anyfundamental impact on clinical work. Dealing with these philosophical issuescould at best enrich the understanding of the work we are already doing. In thecourse of this book I hope to show otherwise; that indeed such issues do haveimportant implications for clinical work, that for this reason the practitionershould indeed be very interested in pursuing these questions and coming to acomprehensive understanding of the issues at hand.

The Term Positivism

The use of the term positivism to refer to a natural science conception of psy-choanalysis is somewhat confusing. Auguste Comte (17981857) had intro-duced the use of positivism to denote the view that there are general rules ofmethodology that apply to all fields of investigation, to the human and the nat-ural sciences alike. However, the term does ring strange in the context of thetwentieth century. Since the time of Comte, the term positivism has accruednew meaning, and now is usually taken as shorthand for logical positivism.Logical positivism is a philosophical theory, introduced by what was known asthe Vienna circle in the early 1920s. Influential in the first half of the twentiethcentury, logical positivism in its original form died in the middle of the century,with its demise becoming renowned for being the one philosophical theory to



have actually been conclusively demonstrated to be false. While propoundingviews on all major philosophical issues from ethics to metaphysics, one of themost central theses of logical positivism is that the meaning of a proposition isits method of verification; we cannot meaningfully talk of entities other thanobservables (Schlick, 1959). Unobservable entities such as electrons, the uncon-scious, causes, and so on, are not independently existing things hidden from ourview, but rather ways of describing observable data in condensed form, someeven say fictions. For example, to speak about electrons is simply a short way oftalking about certain observed patterns of measurements on scientific instru-ments. Similarly, to say that stress causes headache is merely to say that headacheoften follows stress (after all, we do not observe the causation itself, over andabove the sequence of events that we observe to be following each other). In thissense, logical positivists are anti-realist with respect to unobservable, theoreticalposits. (By realism with respect to X I mean, roughly speaking, as the expres-sion is commonly used in philosophy: the belief that X is not merely in ourminds so to speak; that it has a reality that is independent of peoples thoughtsabout it.)

There are certain aspects of logical positivism that Freud may seem tohave espoused. However, many aspects of logical positivism are plainly irrele-vant to Freuds work; regarding many others the relationship is unclear, andtheir anti-realist perspective clearly runs counter to the blatant realism that (forthe most part) pervades Freuds writings. Freud was convinced that his workled him to discover realities that lay beyond the directly observed data.Strangely, those who label Freud a positivist do not regard his realism to becontradictory to his alleged positivism, but rather as further evidence of it(Hoffmann, 1991; Schafer, 1983, p. 184). Conversely, those eschewingmetapsychology, and even the reality of causation on the ground that these arenot observable, consider themselves to be moving away from this positivistictrend (Home, 1966; Klein, 1976; Schafer, 1976). This unfortunate choice ofterminology is not only one of the sources of the confusion that arises in theapplication of the term positivism within psychoanalysis. This choice alsoencourages the dismissal of the scientific approach to psychoanalysis on thegrounds that the time has finally come to lay it to rest: positivism has died.Now to some other sources of confusion.

The Hermeneuticist Critique of Positivism

The scientific view, according to the hermeneuticist formulation, is concernedwith objective facts and with causes. While those holding a scientific view mayagree with this, it is the hermeneuticist definitions of the terms fact and causethat make matters highly problematic. Two major problems lie at the heart ofthe matter: First, they define cause and psychic facts in such a way that the two



cannot belong to the same domain; and, second, they define meaning in such away that the search for it, by the mere force of definition, cannot have anythingto do with the observation of facts and the determining of causal connections.Let us turn to the details of their critique.

The First Critique of Positivism: Psychic States Cannot be Discussed in Termsof Causation. This position has several (partially overlapping) versions includingthe following.

a. Accessibility of psychic states. Psychic states are either not accessible to theobserver or are contaminated by the subjectivity of the observer, his or her theo-ries and methods, so that we can never really know the fact of the matter regard-ing these states. As Roy Schafer explains (1976, p. 205): We psychoanalystscannot rightly claim to establish causality through our investigations in any rig-orous and untrivial sense of the term. Control, production, mathematical preci-sion are beyond our reach, for we are not engaged in the kind of investigationthat can yield these results. Also in psychoanalytic investigations, according toSchafer, in contrast to all other fields of inquiry, there can be no theory-freeand method-free facts (Schafer, 1983, p. 188). Consequently we do not haveaccess to the psychic states themselves. Rather all perception is interpretation incontext (Schafer, 1983, p. 184). Or as Renik (1993, 1998) explains, in theanalytic situation subjectivity is irreducible, meaning that the analysts clinicalobservations of the patients psychical states are no more than constructionsdetermined by the analysts personal subjective experiences and interests. Whatfollows is that there is no point in talking of the causation of such states.

b. Non-factuality of psychic states. Psychic states have a unique status suchthat there is no real fact of the matter regarding them. Those who maintain thisposition often make much use of Freuds ill-chosen term material reality,which he contrasts with psychical reality. While Freud used the term to dis-tinguish between reality and fantasy, hermeneuticists have portrayed the distinc-tion as being between events that have real existence and psychical events, whichdo not (Ricouer, 1981, p. 254). In line with this view Ricouer (1974, p. 186)contends, for example, that there are no facts in psychoanalysis, but rather theinterpretation of a narrated history. Others have associated this nonfactualview with the notion that subjective states spontaneously come into being, espe-cially in the course of analytic treatment (Home, 1966, p. 45; Schafer, 1978,pp. 4849). Or as Hanly (1990) in a sharp critique has referred to it: the notionthat there is an intrinsic indefiniteness of the human mind which allows it toslip away from any description that would seek to correspond with some fixedand determinate nature (p. 376). In any case, since according to this view thereis no fact of the matter regarding these psychic states, here too the consequenceis that they are beyond causation.



c. Causation does not apply to psychic events. Causation belongs only to thedomain of material events; hence, psychic events are not causal. Here there aretwo versions, one that we can talk of human causation only on a neurologicallevel (e.g., Basch, 1976, pp. 7273); the other and more common version isthat we can talk of causation only in terms of the effects of real external eventson the person (e.g., Rycroft, 1966, p. 16; Schafer, 1976). The neurologicalprocesses underlying our psychic states are part of a causal network as are ournonpsychic observable behaviors. In other words, real observable past eventscausally effect present ones; thus, for example, our present character traits maybe causally determined by events that actually occurred in childhood. But psy-chic reality, our fantasies, wishes, intentions, and so on, lack the physical sub-stance necessary for causation. Once we reject the reduction of the psychic tothe biological, and put aside knowledge regarding external reality and its influ-ence of past events, there is no longer any room to talk of causation. The ideasof causes has a place only in the behavioristic approach to people (Schafer,1976, p. 370). An auxiliary component of this view is that intentions, reasons,wishes, and dispositions are not considered to be causes. These are personalconstructs of noncausal status (Klein, 1976, p. 43; Schafer, 1976, pp.204205. This position has been discussed at length by Grnbaum, 1984, andStrenger, 1991).

The Second Critique of Positivism: Observation and Causation are Divorcedfrom the Search for Meaning. This is a most central point and, as will later beseen, is of great significance to the issue of psychoanalytic dream interpretation.The positivists are said to be involved in some kind of scientific endeavorrather than devoting themselves to the study of meaning. This in part followsfrom the unusual definition of causation and the hermeneuticist view of theepistemic difficulties regarding the knowledge of psychic states (see the previoussection on accessibility). More specifically, since causation is allegedly a categorythat applies only to biology and external nonpersonal events, the positivists,who are concerned with causation, cannot be concerned with meaning per se.Also, since the recognition of psychic states is essential to elaboration of mean-ing, positivists, who apply objective methods, which cannot perceive thesestates, cannot really elaborate meaning. As Home (1966) affirms: Becausemeaning is an aspect of the living subject known to us through identification itcannot be investigated by the methods and logic of science for these are applica-ble only to the dead object, or to the object perceived as dead (p. 47).

But the disjunction of meaning and causation extends beyond this. Thereappears to be an argument to the effect that even if we assume that causation isapplicable to psychic states, and even if we assume that these states may beobserved, the search for meaning is simply inherently unrelated to the search forcauses. Meaning, in any sense relevant to psychoanalysis, is noncausal. In this



context Freuds concern with meaning is often contrasted with his desire toarrive at a causal understanding. For example, Basch (1976, p. 73) writes thatFreud was to assert many times . . . that psychoanalysts are concerned withmeaning alone, only to then immediately try to hypothesize causal explanationsfor the events termed meaningful. In a similar but more extreme vein Home(1966, p. 43) writes that In discovering that the symptom had meaning andthat basing his treatment on this hypothesis, Freud took the psychoanalyticstudy of neurosis out of the world of science into the world of the humanities,because a meaning is not the product of causes but the creation of a subject.

Taking into account these definitions of mental states, causes, and mean-ing, positivism emerges as an irrelevant and misguided endeavor within thepsychoanalytic setting. It tries to establish facts to the neglect of the epistemicimpossibility resulting from the contamination of the data by theory; it seekscausation where there is none or where it cannot be determined; and it isinvolved with the effects of external reality and biology, rather than with theintrapsychic world of the individual. The positivistic concern with psychic real-ity is not a concern with subjectivity or with meaning.

A Response to the Hermeneuticist Critique of Positivism:Psychic States Can be Discussed in Terms of Causation

The confusion that underlies the hermeneuticist conclusions and their premisesregarding subjectivity, causation, meaning, and so on, that are at its base is quiteextensive and a comprehensive study of it would take us way too far afield. Inthis section I will briefly respond to their first critiquethat psychic statescannot be discussed in terms of causation. A response to their second critique,which focuses on their claim that observation and causation are not related to asearch for meaning, requires a broader statement on meaning and its relation-ship to causation. I will discuss this broader point in the following section, andin that context I will address the hermeneuticist critique.

a. Response to the argument against accessibility of psychic states. First, itshould be noted that anyone working within the field of psychoanalysis mustpresuppose that the psychoanalyst has some access to the patients psychicstates, particularly to the suffering for which he or she seeks help. To the extentthat we take psychic states to be the subject matter of our interest in the psycho-analytic setting, we are thereby assuming that they are accessible to the observer.To what are we responding in the patient if we have no idea about his or hersubjective mental states? What is it we are understanding, if psychic states arenot accessible?

Furthermore, the fact that a given psychic state is subjective in the senseof being inside the person and hidden from direct view does in no way imply



that it is impossible to assess its existence in some indirect way. Indeed, this isprecisely what science does: It studies phenomena that are not directly observ-ableand with a tremendous degree of success. Electrons, black holes, electriccurrents, the evolution and disappearance of ancient species, the birth of stars,are no more observable than unconscious desires or hidden traumas. Scientistscan directly observe only remote by-products of these phenomena, and eventhose usually only through the mediation of readings on their instruments. Butthis hardly shows that they have no access to such phenomena. In a similar way,there is every reason to believe that through the persons behavior, gestures, self-description, and so on, we can in principle learn about his or her psychic world.

In fact, this is what we commonly do in everyday interactions with others.By attending to other peoples behavior and words, we commonly learn abouttheir headaches, thoughts, anxieties, or worriesthough, like all facts, not withcomplete certainty. In this respect we are like scientists who attend to the lan-guage and behavior of earthquakes, tissues in test tubes, or light from distantstars, and uncover the hidden geological, biological, or astronomical reality thatthey express. Thus, the direct unobservability of psychic states in no way impliestheir inaccessibility. To deny a priori our accessibility to them just because theyare subjective and thus hidden from view is to reject the whole of science with aprescientific naivet.

The claim that the involvement of the observer, with his or her theoriesand methods, bars access to psychic states is equally untenable. Admittedly, it ispossible to maintain that our theoretical precommitments and our methodsinfluence the way we perceive the facts. Whatever we observe in our patientsand whatever our patients tell us are already colored by the observers concep-tual scheme or way of looking at the world. That something must be wrongwith this argument is clear, however, from the fact that it can be applied notjust to psychic facts but also to every single aspect of our world. Our theoreticalprecommitments and conceptual scheme should color not only psychic databut chemical, biological, meteorological, and everyday facts just as well. Hence,if the argument were sound, we would not have access to facts in any scientificfield. It would seem, however, that the hermeneuticists do not wish to maintainthat there are no facts accessible to science at all, but rather only that psychoan-alytic facts are inaccessible, but the basis for this distinction remains obscure.3

Moreover, it is important to recognize that even if the world can be seen onlythrough our theories, this does not mean that we do not have access to it. Thepossible theory-ladenness of the facts that we encounter merely implies that wecan know only of the world as it made known to us through our human con-ceptual schemes. This is true in the realm of physics and psychoanalysis alike.

b. Response to the argument against factuality of psychic states. The idea thatthe domain of the psychic is not factual, that there is no fact of the matter con-cerning psychic states, sounds rather incredible already at first glance. Do the



hermeneuticists seriously wish to maintain that there is no fact of the matter as towhether or not I am experiencing distress? Do they wish to claim that it is nei-ther true nor false that my patient has, say, a longing for a father figure? That,more specifically, whether or not she has such longing is not just unknowablebut in fact neither true nor false; not in the sense that the situation is a borderlinecase between yes and no (as dusk is neither really day nor really night), but in thesense that it is purely and completely a matter of interpretation? It is hard toimagine what this can possibly mean. We may assume that hermeneuticistswould agree that there is a fact of the matter regarding whether I am now sittingand writing this book. Were they to claim otherwise it would be very strange.Why then should there be no fact of the matter regarding subjective states?

Hermeneuticists are likely to object that writing a book is objective whilepsychic states are subjective. But here one should wonder whether they have notbeen misled by some mystical halo of the term subjective. In its original use,subjective simply means to exist within the subject. It is a geographical term,so to speak, that assigns to anxieties and pains a location inside the person, incontrast to books and chairs that are located outside the subject, in the domainof objects, the objective realm. Obviously, the fact that something happens toreside within the subject does not imply, at least not by itself, that there is nomatter of fact about it. But here subjective has become synonymous withephemeral or hazy, denoting the twilight zone between reality and fiction,and contrasted with facts.

One common argument designed to show that there are no psychic mat-ters of fact is once again based on the fact that we have no data about the psy-chic life that is theory-free. Here the earlier argument is taken one step further.It is now claimed that if all that we observe is colored by our theoretical pre-commitments and our methods, then it is not that facts are inaccessible (asclaimed in that earlier argument) but rather that there are no facts, only inter-pretations. But here too the weakness of this argument becomes immediatelyapparent when it is recognized that it can be applied not only to psychic factsbut to all facts. If the argument is sound, it should take away the factual basisnot only from psychoanalysis but from all of science.

We must, therefore, conclude that if psychic states are in some ultimatesense not hard facts, they are still in the same domain as scientific facts, andhence are sufficiently hard for scientific investigation of the type commonly car-ried out in standard science. The point is that even if the world in which wefind ourselves is a human interpretation, it still contains elementssuch as thechemical structure of water or the etiology of anxietythat we cannot reinter-pret and modify at will, so that there is a definite fact of the matter about them(as they are within the human world). Similarly, there are facts about the natureof the fantasies and feelings passing through a patients mind. Even if our worldis a human interpretation, even if it is Gods dream, it contains elements that



are one way rather than another, which is to say, facts, or if you wish: facts-within-our-human-world.

The claim that psychic states are nonfactual ultimately emerges as strange,and the arguments in its favor obscure. Careful study of the way this claim isput forth and discussed suggests that a possible explanation of the obscurity maylie in the neglect of the distinction between a contentan idea in itself (e.g.,the number 7, the concept of motherhood, or specifically of ones mother) andthe state of having the content, possessing the idea; for example, between the ideaof mother and a fantasy whose content is mother. Contentsof thoughts,desires, fantasies, and so onmay be abstract. They may refer to nonmaterialobjects (e.g., as in a thought about the number 7) or to material objects that areeither real (e.g., as in a desire to have a horse) or unreal (e.g., as in a fantasyabout a unicorn), to objects clearly defined or to indeterminate objects. In con-trast to the abstract contents, the having of the content is a real psychic event.

If one neglects this distinction, one may treat psychic events as unreal justbecause their contents are unreal. From the realization that unicorns are not fac-tual, one may conclude that fantasies about unicorns are not factual. But thismove is obviously fallacious. There are perhaps no facts about unicorns, butthere are facts about the patients fantasy about unicorns: It is a recurring eventthat started at a certain point in time and exerts various influences on thepatients behavior and thoughts. Although contents of psychic states need notbe real, the psychic states themselves are real; they are in a persons mind, and assuch there is a fact of the matter regarding them. I may have a fantasy that mymother had always hit me as a child. This may be completely untrue. The fan-tasy, however, as the presence of the idea in my head, exists. There is a fact ofthe matter regarding it. It is a real state. It is real even if the content to which itrefers may not yet be clearly formed or clear, or if it refers only to some kind ofvague potential. This would simply mean that my psychic event, or fantasywhich is as real as any real event in our worldhas distorted, unformed,unclear, fuzzy, or vague contents.

One may perhaps object that in cases of fuzzy or vague psychic states it isnot the content that is fuzzy but rather the psychic state itself. But even if thiswere true, it still would not make the having of the content any less real. Thefact that a painting or a cloud is fuzzy does not mean that its reality is in ques-tion. Even vague psychic states are real and factual.

c. Response to the argument that causation does not apply to psychic states.Causation does indeed apply to psychic events. In some limited sense, the ques-tion of causation in the psychic domain may be considered as a matter of defin-ition. Someone could arbitrarily decide to define causation in a way thatdelimits it to biological entities, or in a way that makes it applicable only to theeffects of real external events. One could also define it such that it would relateonly to interstellar influences. To do this, however, would be strange and would



miss the point. Why should the concept of causation be limited in this way?Causation means, very simply, bringing about. To say that an anxiety causeda fantasy is simply to say that the anxiety brought about, or gave birth to, thefantasy. It is hard to see what is wrong with such a formulation. Consider, forinstance, the idea, held by some, that causation should be applied only to theeffects of external reality. Why, for example, should the term causation be con-sidered applicable only in the study of how the real mother affected the psychicstate of her son and not how an idea the son has about his mother (regardless ofits relationship to reality) affects his psychic state? If we adopt a common analy-sis from the field of philosophy, we may say, roughly speaking, that to say thatA caused B is to say that A was followed by B, and were A not to occur, B wouldnot have occurred either. Clearly, according to this common and commonsensi-cal conception of causation, one psychic event may be the cause of another psy-chic event, in the sense that the former was necessary for the second to happen.

Is it because psychic events are considered less real than other events thatthey are excluded from having a causal status? As we have seen, the fact that we donot see our psychic events, the fact that the contents of the psychic events areabstract, does not make the psychic state of having the contents any less real. Andyet in the literature it appears as if the deepening of Freuds early recognition thatwe are not dealing with historical truth, but rather with psychic reality, removescausation from the picture. That is, it is as if once we acknowledge that in theclinical setting we cannot assuredly reconstruct the childhood events that deter-mine the patients current predicament, our interpretations no longer deal withreal entities, regarding which there are indeed questions of what determined what.It would seem that this position has recently become so deeply ingrained in psy-choanalysis that some version of it even infiltrates into the writings and case stud-ies of analytic thinkers who acknowledge that the role of causation has been tooreadily dismissed by the hermeneuticists (see Strenger, 1991, pp. 58, 73).

The arguments in favor of psychic events being causal are quite plain.Psychic events (e.g., thinking, believing, fantasizing, feeling, etc.) are real eventsthat occur at a particular time. As such, they are, like all other real events thattake place in real time, subject to causation: They influence, are influenced,bring about, and are brought about by other events. This is especially obvious ifone is a materialist and does not believe in a nonmaterial soul, for then oneshould agree that psychic events take place in our brain and as such are subjectto causation.

Furthermore, whether one believes that psychic events are in the brain orin the soul, there are simple cases in which it is obvious that these events causeand are caused. Think what it would mean to deny this. For example, the stateof distress causes (brings about, gives birth to) the expression of pain. Insultcauses distress. Clearly, it is not just a coincidence that one event tends to followthe other. Were we to assume otherwise, a patient could cry in pain but we



would have no reason to believe that the cry is a result of (i.e., was caused by)her actually being in a state of distress, for this would involve the attribution ofcausation to that state. We could not assume that the insult, or any other dis-tress-correlated event, such as falling on ones face, actually brought on the dis-tress. So whether distress (or any other mental event) is a material brain-event ora nonmaterial soul-event, either way the correlation clearly shows that it is sub-ject to causal relations.

Do the hermeneuticists wish to deny these obvious cases of causation? Iwould gather that many of those who reject the positivistic position do not optfor this alternative. Rather, they refer to the relationships that I call (in accor-dance with common use) causes in different terms such as, motives, wishes,intentions, and dispositions, which are said to bring about, be responsiblefor, give birth to, or similar expressions, which are merely different ways ofspeaking of causation. The only advantage of not referring to these as causes isthat in this way they are supposedly no longer subject to the scientific standardsto which causation is subject. It is as if a new and wholly other standard must beapplied when we come to the domain of persons and psychic reality.

In sum, the arguments put forth here show that the hermeneuticists claimthat mental states cannot be discussed in terms of causal processes is untenable.Their first main critique is found to be misguided. In the next section, in whichwe examine the concept of meaning, their second critique of science as irrelevantto the psychoanalytic interest with meaning emerges as equally untenable.

Meaning and Causation

The concept of meaning has many different meanings and applications in dif-ferent fields. What it refers to is not something to be discovered or assumed, butis rather a matter of definition. The lack of recognition of this transforms matterof definition into matters of self-evident givens and results in spurious dispute.Examples of this may be found in the accusation that Freud put aside his con-cern with meaning to address questions of causation (e.g., Basch, 1976), or thathe mistakenly assumed that meaning was tied to causation (e.g., Stolorow &Atwood, 1982). In Freuds terms, however, it is not possible to put aside mean-ing for causation, nor for him could meaning be mistakenly assumed to be tiedto causation. For Freud meaning was defined by its tie to causation. Those whoaccuse him of neglect or mistake define meaning differently. As a rule, it wouldseem that in the psychoanalytic literature the referent of the term meaning istaken for granted, although different analysts are in fact referring to differentthings by the term. The result of this is not only misguided claims of neglectand mistake, but also a large degree of obscurity. To clarify matters, let us maketwo basic distinctions.



Two Distinctions Regarding Meaning.

a. Meaning within the subject versus meaning to an observer: An expressedcontent can be attended to in two basic ways. One can wonder what the subjectexpressing the content is expressing. What does he mean? This is the meaningwithin the subject. On the other hand, one can wonder what the content beingexpressed by the subject means to me the observer. This is the meaning to theobserver. In the one, the content is determined in terms of the subjects psychiccontext, and in the other in terms of the psychic context of the observer. Forexample, when the subject says he feels hungry, we may be concerned with whathe is expressing in this statement; what he means by it. Alternately we may beconcerned with what this expression means to me. In terms of my psychic con-text it may be that an expression of hunger means an egocentric focus on bodilyneeds. This is what it means to me. But, of course, it may have nothing whatso-ever to do with the meaning within the subject. In fact, he may be hungrybecause he is fasting out of identification with the starving people of India.There may, at times, be much more confluence between what things mean tothe subject and what they mean to the observer. Empathic understanding isbased on such confluence. The observer may know what the subject is meaningbecause given such confluence there will be some similarity between what anexpression means both to the observer and within the subject. At other times,there may be meaning to the observer while there is none in terms of the subjector even when there is no subject. This is the case when one reacts to aRorschach card (although the observer may transform the task to what thealleged subject who created the Rorschach card wished to express).

Of course, there is also the option that a person take an observer stance inrelation to oneself. In this case she would wonder, from the third-person per-spective, what she had said means to herself.

This distinction between meaning within the subject of a certain individ-ual and meaning to the observer of that some individual usually goes unnoted(Peterfreund [1971] is an exception). The impact of this becomes most appar-ent when it comes to dream interpretation. To understand the meaning of adream may mean either to understand its meaning within the subject whoexpressed it at the time of the dream, or to understand what it means to thedreamer, as observer, when awake. As we will see, it is not self-evident that thetwo are one and the same, and which of the two is being referred to is notalways clear.

In what follows I continue with the elaboration of the meaning withinthe subject.

b. The meaning of a statement versus the meaning of stating. This distinc-tion is between the meaning of the content being expressed and the meaning ofthe act of stating or expressing the content. For example, if a person suddenly



says, I really love my mother, I can wonder what is the meaning (within thesubject) of the statement. Depending on the person, the context, as well as onones theory of meaning, this statement can have various meanings. One possi-ble meaning is that the person has a feeling of love for her mother. Another pos-sible meaning is that she actually hates her mother and this statement is aconcealed expression of this. There are, of course, many other possible ways thatthis statement could be understood. Alternatively, however, the question maybe not what she means, but what is the meaning of the fact that she is makingthis statement. Perhaps she had heard or thought something that made her feelguilty toward her mother and this caused her to state what she did. Or it mayhave been that someone she admired just said these words and she wished toemulate her, and so on. Here the act of stating means, I feel guilty, or I wishto be just like my admired friend. As we will later see, according to some for-mulations the meaning of stating is considered to be part of the meaning of thestatement. In this case, the meaning of the statement would include, for exam-ple, both the feeling of love and the feeling of guilt.

The distinctions that we have discussed thus far may be charted as follows(Figure 1.1):

Meaning of the Statement: Described, Created, and Discovered Mean-ings. When we speak of meaning we are speaking of a relationship between twoentities. We say that X means Y. To understand the meaning of meaning in psy-choanalysis we must define what these entities are and the nature of the rela-tionship between them. Within psychoanalysis we may distinguish betweenthree broad categories of meaning that differ on this latter dimension.


Figure 1.1. Meaning Distinctions Chart

Meaning

Meaning to the observer Meaning within the subject

Meaning of stating Meaning of the statement


To clarify matters, let us return to the distinction just made between acontent, which is abstract, and the having of the content, which is a real and con-crete psychic event or state. It is possible to speak of meaning in terms of rela-tionships between contents. Relationships between entities of this kind arefound, for example, in semantics. When we speak of the meaning of the con-cept of happiness we are speaking of the relationship between this content andanother content, for example: Happiness means joy or pleasure. The relation-ship in this instance is one of convention. There are other forms of relationshipbetween contents, which refer to other senses of the term meaning. For exam-ple, we may inquire into the meaning of happiness in a philosophical sense.Here too we would be relating to contents, abstract ideas, but the relationshipwould be conceptual, as when Aristotle defines the meaning of happiness as anactivity of the soul in accordance with excellence (Aristotle, 1963).

In contrast, we can also talk of meaning in terms of the relationshipbetween one psychic event or state and another psychic event or state (each oneof which may have various contents).4 For example, when we want to know themeaning of happiness in psychoanalysis we want to know the meaning, not ofthe abstract concept of happiness, but of the actual psychic event of happinessor, in other words, the meaning of being in the state of happiness. A satisfactoryaccount of such meaning would refer to other psychic states. For example, wemay say that happiness means to the individual the feeling of being admired bya significant person, or the idea of having fulfilled an Oedipal wish. Here weidentified meaning as the connection between two psychic states: e.g., the stateof happiness and the feeling of being admired.

Note that in this example meaning is portrayed as a general connectionbetween one type of psychic states (states of happiness) to another type (feelingsof being admired). Meaning as a general connection between types of states canbe found in general theories, as in the case of Freuds theories regarding themeaning of anxiety, the meaning of jealousy, and, as we will see, the meaning ofthe dream. Against the background of such general theories, we may also speakof meaning as a specific connection in a particular individual between one spe-cific psychic event or state to another. Thus, we may inquire into the meaningof happiness in a general and theoretical way, or alternatively we may be con-cerned with the meaning of happiness in one specific person, that is, in terms ofan individuals personal context of meaning. It is the latter that is of interest tous here.

So far we have isolated the general sense in which we speak of meaning inpsychoanalysis, and identified it with connections between psychic entities,either general types of entities or particular ones. However, the issue now is:What kind of connections are such meaning-connections? The answer is thatembedded in the psychoanalytic literature are three different psychoanalyticapproaches to the nature of these connections. We may, therefore, speak of



three different categories of meaning within psychoanalysis. I will refer to thesethree categories as meaning described, meaning created, and meaning discov-ered. Each of these is based on a different conception of the nature of meaning-connections between psychic events. Meaning described refers to anexperiential relationship, meaning created to a thematic (i.e., semantic, orcontent-based) relationship, and meaning discovered to a causal relationship.

More specifically, when we speak of X meaning Y for a certain subject, wemay be referring to three alternative connections between X and Y. First, wemay be referring to the fact that the subject has an experience of X being tied toY. For example, a person may feel that his happiness is tied to his feeling ofbeing admired by a significant person.5 This feeling may be mistaken in thesense that it does not reflect his inner reality. He may be completely happyindependently of any admiration, but his experience creates the tie betweenthese psychic events. If we are interested in meaning in this sense, what we needto do is to carefully read the descriptions offered by the subject. Our questionhere would be how the individual experiences or describes the connectionsbetween his various psychic entities, not how they really are connected. Hence Irefer to this form of meaning as meaning described. It should be stressed thatwhat characterizes this approach is not the claim that attunement to experienceis important for determining meaning. All psychoanalytic approaches wouldagree on that. Rather what characterizes this approach is the claim that mean-ings are determined by the description of the experience. Meaning is the imme-diate experience of connections between psychic entities, the way a certainpsychic entity is embedded in the ongoing course of . . . experiencing(Atwood & Stolorow, 1984, p. 99).

Analysts who maintain this descriptive view of meaning often do not doso exclusively. They usually do not make do with the meanings that the individ-ual describes, but rather consider there to be additional meanings that in duecourse should become experientially available. To relate to these additionalmeaning it is necessary to rely on one of the other two psychoanalytic views ofmeaning to which I now turn.

One alternate sense in which we may speak of X meaning Y would referto a thematic tie between these psychic events, that is, the connection betweentheir themes, or contents. Thus, when we speak of X meaning Y for a certainsubject we may be saying that there is a common theme between what one psy-chic event (X) is about and what another psychic event (Y ) is about, regardlessof whether the two are related in any other sense. For example, within a spe-cific individual there may exist a thematic tie between happiness and admira-tion based on the common theme of worthwhileness. This individual feelshappiness to be a worthwhile state, and he also feels being admired to be aworthwhile state. To sharpen the point, let us assume that in fact there is nopsychological connection between the two states of worthwhileness; the two



have developed in him independently of each other. Nevertheless, there iswithin this individual a meaning-connection between happiness and admira-tionthat is, a common theme between the content happiness is worthwhileand being admired is worthwhileeven though there is no psychologicalconnection between the two. Here the meaning is not necessarily immediatelyfelt or experienced, nor does it reflect some internal connection in the psycheof the subject. Rather, it reflects a semantic connection between two ideas, onethat may be formulated (either by the subject or by another observer) througha literary analysis of the contents. Of course, the subject may happen to experi-ence that thematic connection, but the point is that it is not the experiencethat constitutes the connection.

Meaning as thematic connections is not read off the subjects experience,nor is it discovered to exist inside the subjects psyche or experiences in any way.It is rather woven, so to speak, between the subjects statements regarding hispsychic entities, and added on to what is already found within him. In a sense,speaking of thematic connections between a persons statements is similar towriting a story, which connects the different statements into a coherent script.Meaning based on this kind of connections can therefore be seen as a literarycreation of the observerwhether the subject observing himself or anotherperson. I will therefore call it meaning created. This view of meaning is centralto all psychoanalytic hermeneuticists, but perhaps has been most forcefully pre-sented by Schafer (1983) in his focus on the analysts function of creating storiesand by Spence (1982a, 1982b), who speaks of the analysts function as a pat-tern-maker rather than a pattern finder.

The third sense in which we may speak of X meaning Y refers to a causalconnection between the two psychic events. Thus, when we say that X means Ywe mean that in some way Y brought about X or influenced the way in which itappeared. This connection does not have to be experienced in order to exist, nordoes there necessarily have to be a thematic tie between the two (although inpsychoanalysis there usually is). In our example of happiness this would meanthat the feeling of happiness and the feeling of being admired would be causallyattached to each other, they would be part of the same causal network, ratherthan attached merely by after-the-fact experience or thematic interpretation.Since this category of meaning is based on a relationship that does indeed reflecta realitythat is, an inner reality, or actual causal ties between psychic eventsmeaning in this sense is something to discover, not to postulate or create. Wemay, therefore, refer to this category as meaning discovered. This approach tomeaning is the classical one and has dominated psychoanalysis since the time ofFreud until the emergence of psychoanalytical hermeneuticism in recent years(see Friedman, 1996, p. 261).

It may be noted that in all three categories we are talking about the mean-ing of contents that exist in the mind, not about abstract contents, but only in



meaning discovered is the meaning itself something that exists in the mind.That is, only in meaning discovered is the relationship between the psychicentities that exist in the mind, something that also actually exists in the mind.

It may also be noted that meaning discovered resembles meaning cre-ated in that in both meaning is determined from a third-person perspective(even if it is a subjects own third-person observation on herself). In contrast, inmeaning experienced meaning is based on a first-person perspective; it isbased on the subjects immediate experience. More important, however, the fol-lowing distinction between meaning discovered and the other two categoriesshould be noted: Meaning discovered refers to a causal relationship betweenpsychic events while the other two kinds of meaning refer to noncausal relation-ships. Before further exploring this distinction and the nature of the relationshipbetween meaning and causation, let us first glance at one more example throughwhich the differences between the categories of meaning become apparent.

Example: The meaning of Janes fear of headaches is guilt.In this sentence, meaning is specified as a relationship or connection

between the psychic event of fear of headaches and the psychic event of feelingsof guilt. From the perspective of meaning described, the relationship wouldbe experiential. She feels a tie between the two. The meaning would be arrivedat by attending to Janes description of her experience of a connection betweenher fear of headaches and her sense of guilt. For example, she may say that shefeels that the fear appears whenever she feels that she should be reprimanded fornot having lived up to what she should have.

From the perspective of meaning created, the relationship between thefear and the guilt would be thematic. Through a simple analysis of abstract ideaswe can readily see that the concept of guilt implies deserving punishment, andthat the concept of punishment implies suffering such as pain (headaches).Thus, the guilt ties in well, in a literary sense, with the fear of headache andestablishes a thematic connection with it. Meaning here would be arrived at byobserving thematic ties between the fear of headaches and the sense of guilt.Coherence between the two ideas would be sought. For example, one possiblescenario is that in the course of the analytic sessions Jane speaks of the untimelydeath of her mother years ago due to a sudden blood clot. She also expresses herfeeling of her intellectual superiority over her mother, and the feeling that theexpression of the superiority can kill. One may then point to a connectionbetween the idea expressed in the fear of being hurt in the brain (the headache)and the idea expressed in the fear of hurting the brain (causing the blood clot)because of the brain (her intellectual superiority). Similarly, guiltwhich iswhat Jane feelscan be tied to the idea of a retributive system based on a com-bination of an eye for an eye and cut off the arm that steals. In this way, wemay tie the guilt that Jane feels with the idea that one should be hurt in the waythat one hurt others and in a way that should prevent the possibility of future



hurt. We may then point to the parallel between the fear of headaches and itsassociated ideas and the guilt and its associated ideas. The idea of guilt, asexpressed in Janes feelings, has the same pattern as does her fear of headaches.One may understand the fear of headaches in terms of guilt. In this sense thefear means guilt.

It is important to emphasize that if we are interested only in meaningcreated, then we should not be concerned with the issue of whether or not theabove fearguilt thematic connection reflects Janes actual psychology. As far aswe are concerned, Janes fear and her guilt may be completely unrelated interms of her inner psychology. Each one of the two may have developed inde-pendently of the other. If it is only the literary, thematic connection in whichwe are interested, then this possibility should not bother us (perhaps because

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Blass, Rachel - The Meaning of the Dream in Psychoanalysis